Smart has confirmed UK specs and prices for the new ForTwo and ForFour, scheduled to go on sale in February 2015. The two-seat ForTwo city car starts at £11,125 and the four-door, four-seat ForFour less than £500 more at £11,620.
Not much difference between the two Smarts then, but there is quite a gulf between the ForFour and its co-developed Renault Twingo sister car. The Twingo kicks off from £9,495, making it £2,125 cheaper than the base ForFour.
Why the price difference?
Good question. The Twingo’s equipment levels are generous enough, if not quite as plush as the Smart, and it gets the same choice of engines. The base Twingo Expression includes the likes of DAB radio and Bluetooth and comes with the same 70bhp 999cc engine as the base Passion-spec ForFour. To some eyes it’s the easier car to look at, too…
The Smart brand is billed as a more premium proposition than Renault’s everyman Twingo and there’s doubtless some sound business strategy involved to keep the two cars separate, rather than
fighting for the exact same bit of the market.
Still, fact remains that if you want to get into a four-seat Smart you’ll have to spend two grand more than to get into a Twingo.
Run me through the Smart ForTwo UK specs.
Engine-wise, the ForTwo gets two options, both of them petrol-fuelled. There’s a 999cc unit kicking out 70bhp (without a turbo) or an 898cc one with 89bhp (with one). The former averages a claimed 68.9mpg, coughs out 93g/km of CO2 and propels the little Smart to a probably-quite-frightening 94mph flat out. Figures for the more powerful option are 67.3mpg, 97g/km and 96mph.
This time the engines are coupled with a manual gearbox as standard rather than the jerky semi-automatic contraption of old. A new, smoother six-speed twin-clutch auto will join the range shortly after launch as a £995 option.
There’s a choice of three trim levels: Passion, Prime and Proxy. On the kit front, all get climate control and Bluetooth while the Prime adds a glass roof and heated leather seats. The Proxy model costs the same as the Prime and is the token sporty trim, with 16-inch alloys (the rest of the range ride on 15s), a chromed exhaust and suspension lowered by 10mm.
Like the old ForTwo, paint schemes are at the brighter end of the spectrum, with contrasting colours between the safety cell and the rest of the body.
And the ForFour?
Initially the ForFour just gets the 70bhp engine and manual gearbox, with the turbo’d powerplant and auto ’box joining the line-up later. Vital stats for the ForFour with the smaller engine read 67.3mpg, 97g/km and 94mpg.
It too gets the same three trim levels, with broadly the same differences in equipment between them.
Read CAR’s Renault Twingo first drive here